This 'Caring' Lark
by PrincessNala
Summary: And that was the moment Sherlock mused that maybe this 'caring' lark wasn't such a bad thing after all. Sherlock/John


**Heya everyone, this is my first Sherlock fanfic, but I doubt it'll be my last since I've already got a more… intimate oneshot planned, so look out for it! :D**

**The set out of this fic is admittedly a bit different, but that's just because most of the dialogue from that last scene in 'The Great Game' was just too awesome for me to leave out, so this is the result :)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or anything to do with it, but if I did there'd be a lot more loving between Sherlock and John, and Benedict Cumberbatch would definitely have a few shirtless scenes, because that man is so fine! Haha ;p**

**Spoilers for the last episode in here, I guess. But if you haven't already watched it then THERE'S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH YOU! **

**Read on and review for me, ta!**

* * *

_"So why's he doing this, then? Playing this game with you. Do you think he wants to be caught?"_

_"I think he wants to be distracted."_

_"Huh, well, I hope you'll be very happy together."_

"_Sorry, what?"_

"_There are lives at stake, Sherlock! Actual __**human**__ lives! Just so I know, do you care about that at all?"_

"_Will caring about them help save them?"_

"_Nope."_

"_Then I'll continue not to make that mistake."_

"_And you find that easy, do you?"_

"_Yes, very. Is that news to you?"_

"_No… No."_

"_I've disappointed you."_

"_That's good, good deduction, yeah."_

"_Don't make people into heroes, John, heroes don't exist and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them. Ah, excellent. View of the Thames. South bank, somewhere between Suffolk Bridge and Waterloo. You check the papers, I'll look online… Oh. You're angry with me, so you won't help. Not much cop, this 'caring' lark."_

* * *

It had been of those rare moments in Sherlock's life where his own words had come back to haunt him at a later date. Almost as though fate itself had heard him and spitefully intervened, just to take the great Sherlock Holmes, consultant detective extraordinaire, down a peg or two to the ground floor level of every other emotion-driven, illogical human being in the world. And Sherlock _hated_ it.

This 'caring' lark was the reason he was here now, soaked through from head to toe, his clothes sticking to his slender frame and his wet hair flopping uselessly in his grey-blue eyes as he desperately gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a lifeless and equally drenched John Watson.

"_This is a turn up, isn't it, Sherlock?"_

"_John... What the hell – "_

"_Bet you never saw this coming."_

That smug look in Moriarty's eyes had done it. To be honest, Sherlock hadn't thought himself able to pull the trigger when he'd aimed the Browning L9A1 down at the bomb at the suited man's feet. But that taunting expression in those dark, dark eyes, screaming that he just wouldn't be able to do it... So he had.

At the time, it'd felt like slow motion. Sherlock pulled the trigger and he did indeed get the chance to cherish Moriarty's somewhat shocked expression before the bullet drilled into the incendiary device and blew the whole place practically to hell. It was a small comfort to him that he'd managed to flip the power position on Moriarty for at least a split-second before the flames had engulfed the space between them and the responding explosion shook the entire room to its very foundations.

He hadn't considered a way to escape the blast himself.

Luckily for him, John Watson had.

"_What... would you like me... to make him say... next?"_

The moment Sherlock fired that crucial shot, John barrelled into him from the side with the whole force of his small but strong body, knocking them both straight into the shimmering chlorine blue waters of the swimming pool. That familiar warm scent that was purely John filled Sherlock's nostrils, and he could feel the heat of his body as the other man flung his arms around the taller man's waist as they plunged into the aquamarine depths. The last thing Sherlock saw was Moriarty sprinting through the exit behind him before the rapidly spreading flames could reach him, then Sherlock and John hit the water hard, face-first.

They sunk together, both gripping onto the other man's upper arms to keep them from floating back up. John's face flashed across Sherlock's vision, his tawny eyes wide and his grey-flecked mousy hair flowing outwards from his head. Sherlock tilted his head to stare upwards, observing with scientific curiosity and delight as the vicious orange glow spread to cover the surface area of the pool, each flickering flame distorted by the swirling of the water.

Even the pool itself had shook when the blast hit the walls nearest, and most of the ceiling disintegrated instantly, raining down shrapnel and rubble into the room below.

"_Nice touch, this. The pool where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson too... stop his heart."_

The falling ceiling pierced through the water like bullets, and Sherlock had pulled John close to his body to minimise the risk of either of them being struck. Sherlock's lungs had burned in his chest, screaming for oxygen, but he refused to listen. He was used to ignoring his body when it urged him to do something. Like take drugs again. Or get drunk again.

John hadn't been able to ignore his body. After so long without oxygen, he started to shake underwater, his chest juddering and his eyes flickering impossibly fast. He'd released Sherlock to clutch at his own throat, trying to physically prevent himself from fulfilling the need to take a breath. The taller darker-haired man had to hold him under, clamping his hands down on his colleague's shoulders to stop him from kicking his way up to the surface. It was still unsafe up there, and the heat would be unbearable for the human body to withstand for at least another half a minute, by his estimation.

But at twelve seconds to go, hazy tendrils of black started to creep in from the corners of Sherlock's vision.

And John fell completely limp in his grip.

"_Who are you?"_

"_I gave you my number. Thought you might call. Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket? Or are you just pleased to see me?"_

_"Both."_

_"Jim Moriarty. Hiii. Jim? Jim from the hospital? Huh. Did I really make such a fleeting impression? But then again, I suppose that was rather the point."_

It'd been a small risk, surfacing before those final ten seconds were up, but Sherlock had been more than willing to take it. He dragged himself and John out of the pool and into the scorched dry air, gulping down several lungfuls of it before he then set about bringing the ex-army medic back to the land of the living again with a combination of chest compressions and breathing his own air into the other man's lax mouth.

And that was the moment Sherlock Holmes fully realised just how much he cared.

He'd only known John for a few weeks now, but they'd already had enough life-threatening adventures together to last a lesser man a lifetime. But neither Sherlock nor John were lesser men, which meant that there were never enough adventures to satisfy them. Sherlock had found, he believed, a kindred spirit in John Watson. Granted, there would never be anyone quite like Sherlock Holmes, but in John he had found the closest thing to compatibility he'd ever achieved with another human being.

Even from the first moment they met, John hadn't dismissed the detective's eccentricities as weird or freakish like everyone else. He'd been awed by Sherlock's skills of deduction and that had peaked the taller man's interest in him.

And over these past few weeks, John was rapidly on the way to becoming the closest friend Sherlock had ever had.

In fact, he was rapidly on the way to becoming more than that.

"_Don't be silly, someone else is holding the rifle. I don't like getting my hands dirty."_

Just like everything else he deemed unimportant, Sherlock had easily buried away the majority of his emotions years ago. But John seemed to have the ability to bring those unwanted feelings back to life again. John was the only person who could make Sherlock smile a genuine smile. He could even make him laugh! To anyone else, that wouldn't seem like much, but to Sherlock it was definitely a big deal. He wasn't used to it. He'd always kept people at arms length, or rather, people kept _him_ at arms length, but John… Well, John wasn't like everyone else. So Sherlock had let him in, shared a flat with him, embarked on solving cases that no one else could with him.

He thought he was really getting to know John the _normal_ way, rather than relying on his deductions gained from first impressions, body language and tiny seemingly insignificant details caught at a single glance.

Which is perhaps why he felt so betrayed when John had first stepped out of one of the poolside cubicles wearing a large hooded coat with his hands thrust deep inside the pockets, his expression completely unreadable from a distance. Sherlock had previously considered himself an excellent judge of character.

Until right then, of course.

_"I've given you a glimpse, Sherlock, a teensy glimpse of what I've got going on out there in the big bad world. I'm a specialist, you see. Like you."_

Sherlock had stared openly at the man he'd thought was his ally, his brain already having drawn the impossible conclusion that John Watson was somehow the infamous Moriarty. The way he'd exhaled the other man's name as though it'd been literally torn out of his throat had been a shock even to himself. Sherlock hadn't realised how much betrayal hurt until he experienced it first hand. He'd never felt it before, because he'd never trusted anyone enough to let them get close enough to betray him. Sherlock had trusted John. That had obviously been a fatal mistake.

But then John had opened his coat, and proved himself to be an innocent in this dangerous game of cat and mouse, and at the sight before him Sherlock's thought processes had come to a complete grinding halt, and he felt a curious mix of relief and dread at the same time, not to mention a sharp spike of shame at being so quick to doubt John's loyalties.

And the sight of John Watson with a bomb strapped to his chest was an image Sherlock never wanted to witness again for as long as he lived.

_"But the flirting's over, Sherlock, daddy's had enough now. I've shown you what I can do. I cut loose all those people, all those little problems, even thirty million quid just to get you to come out and play. So take this as a friendly warning, my dear. Back off."_

John had just been a puppet then, a marionette on a string, used as a mouthpiece for someone else. Moriarty revealed himself, and had brought with him what seemed to be a horde of snipers that took great joy in switching targets between John and Sherlock to make sure that neither man did something that Moriarty didn't want them to do. So when John had bravely grabbed Moriarty from behind and shouted at Sherlock to run, he soon let go again when an ominous dot of bright red light appeared in the centre of Sherlock's forehead.

And then, just as suddenly as he'd arrived, Moriarty left, and Sherlock had wasted no time in throwing himself down on his knees in front of John, his long pale fingers fumbling over the explosive vest to unfasten it as swiftly as he possibly could. He'd literally torn the heavy coat and bomb from the smaller man's body and flung it across the floor to the other end of the room. Sherlock didn't know why, but he needed John's assurance that he was alright, and he couldn't explain the sheer amount of relief he felt when John had answered, albeit a little weakly.

Sherlock had paced up and down, waiting for the adrenaline to leave his system as John staggered a little and then fell against one of the cubicles, groaning as he let himself slide down to crouch on the floor with his head in his hands. It'd been difficult for Sherlock, but somehow he managed to stammer out a thank you to John for his selfless actions. It wasn't difficult because he wasn't used to thanking people, but rather it was finding the right words to convey his gratitude to his friend.

He made a right mess of it though, but John didn't mind. He knew what Sherlock had been trying to say.

"_I will stop you."_

"_No you won't."_

"_Are you alright?"_

"_You can talk, Johnny boy. Go ahead."_

He'd broken the somewhat anxious tension with one of his amusing comments that Sherlock had really come to enjoy, but this one was… different. It affected Sherlock more than it usually did, probably because it was a light-hearted sexual innuendo that John had used to lift the mood, but even then it brought a very less than light-hearted mental image to the front of Sherlock's magnificent brain.

Come to think of it, he found he wouldn't mind tearing John's clothes off in a darkened swimming pool.

Now Sherlock had been comfortably asexual for a very long time. As he'd often said, he was married to his work, so that gave him no time to indulge in simple carnal pleasures. Not that he'd ever wanted to indulge. It was just another part of his body's needs that he easily ignored.

Until John Watson had appeared. Sherlock had often found himself staring unabashedly at the smaller man whenever he could, taking in every single tiny detail of his flatmate with his grey-blue eyes. He noticed the little things that even to him seemed unimportant, such as how the skin at the corner of John's tawny eyes crinkled when he smiled, or how his hair was a curious blend of blond and mousy brown, flecked with grey, and yet his facial features still held so much boyish charm despite his age. Hell, Sherlock had even noticed the way John tugged at the hem of his knitted sweaters when he was nervous or irritated, and the way he nibbled his bottom lip in concentration when he was deep in thought. He noticed more things about John Watson than was probably healthy for his psyche.

"_Sherlock, run!"_

"_Good! Very good!"_

"_If your sniper pulls that trigger, Mr Moriarty, then we both go up."_

"_Isn't he sweet, I can see why you like having him around. But then, people do get so sentimental about their pets. They're so tauntingly loyal, but oops! You've rather shown your hand there, Dr Watson. Gotcha!"_

But then, asexual as he assumed he was, Sherlock found he had John on the brain more often than not. He found himself listening, all the time. Hearing the soft movement of fabric from the other room when John got dressed and undressed, listening to the breaks in the water when John took a shower. It had become something of an obsession. Something to pass the time when he was bored, he'd first thought. But no, it was more than that. Brilliant though Sherlock may have been, it took an embarrassingly long time for him to draw the conclusion that his sudden fixation with his flatmate was definitely something more than a platonic pastime.

That conclusion was further proven when he happened to catch sight of John making his way back to his room from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, droplets of water from the shower still dripping down his slim chest and back. John hadn't seen him then, but Sherlock had stared. He couldn't deny that he liked what he saw.

And that night, Sherlock dreamed. For the first time in his life, Sherlock had dreamed about another person in… _that_ particular way. Another man. John Watson.

"_Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? To you."_

"_Oh, let me guess, I get killed."_

"_Kill you? Uh… No, don't be obvious. I mean, I'm going to kill you anyway, someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no. If you don't stop prying, I'll burn you. I'll burn the __**heart**__ out of you."_

"_I have been reliably informed that I don't have one."_

"_But we both know that's not quite true."_

Now he'd passed the point of no return. Sherlock cared for John. He wanted him, _needed_ him. He needed him more than he'd ever needed the drugs.

Dammit! Damn this bloody 'caring' lark! It made Sherlock hurt, made him _feel_, and he didn't want to! Damn John for holding his morals in such regard, for being a good man with the ability to make others want to be just as good! Because Sherlock wanted that. Very much. The way John had looked at him when Sherlock told him he didn't care about the people he had to save… it still hurt even now. He'd lied, of course he had.

If anything, Sherlock's problem was that he cared too much. Moriarty had seen through his façade in a heartbeat. That's why he'd strapped John to that bomb. He'd known Sherlock cared for the ex-army medic more than he cared for anyone else, but even Moriarty probably didn't realise the extent of which those feelings ran.

"_What if I was to shoot you now. Right now."_

"_Then you could cherish the look of surprise on my face. Because I'd be surprised, Sherlock, really I would. And just a teensy bit… disappointed. And of course, you wouldn't be able to cherish it for very long. Ciao, Sherlock Holmes."_

"_Catch… you… later."_

"_No you won't!"_

It was taking too long. Sherlock had been trying to resuscitate John for what felt like hours, but that couldn't be true. It had been a minute or two at the most, but time was crawling by so sluggishly with each compression on the other man's still chest, and each breath of life Sherlock exhaled into his mouth that wasn't returned. Sherlock's hands were shaking. His breathing was sharp and erratic in his ears, desperation clouding his mind. John's damp face was so unnaturally pale, almost as white as Sherlock's own skin, but Sherlock refused to give up.

He'd keep on performing CPR on John if it damn well killed him, because if he lost John… then it would kill him anyway.

"_Alright? Are you alright?"_

_"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine, Sherlock. Sherlock! Are you ok?"_

_"Me? Yeah, fine. I'm fine. That, uh… thing, that you did, that, um… you offered to do. That was, um… good."_

Suddenly, the chest beneath his hands jerked on its own, and John spluttered violently back to consciousness with Sherlock's mouth still fixed on his. The taller dark-haired man reared back on his knees, his body momentarily weakening with relief as John Watson rolled weakly over onto his side and coughed up a lungful of chlorinated pool water.

"Thank God." Sherlock breathed so quietly that only he could hear it, tilting his head back up to stare at the remains of the ceiling and the sparkling stars of the night sky beyond the wreckage. There were still a few fires flickering around them, and chunks of debris continued to fall from the roof, but Sherlock didn't care. All that mattered right now was that John was alive.

John turned back over to face him, pulling himself gingerly up onto his elbows to look up at Sherlock's androgynous features above him.

"Are we even now?" John asked, his voice understandably a little hoarse. Sherlock glanced sharply back down at him, momentarily thrown by the random question.

"What?"

"I saved your life, you saved mine. I think we've had enough excitement for one day, don't you?" John said, his lips spreading into a slight smile, his tawny eyes warm beneath the wet tresses of greying mousy hair that slicked his face.

"_Hope that no one saw that."_

"_Hmm?"_

"_You, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk."_

"_People do little else."_

Sherlock laughed, the sound surprising them both as it echoed around the ruined room. John's smile was pleasantly bemused as Sherlock jumped to his feet and shook his damp curls back out of his eyes, offering a hand down to his colleague. The other man took it without hesitation and let Sherlock pull him up from the ground, staggering a little before he regained his equilibrium.

"You can never have enough excitement, John." Sherlock told him, almost buzzing with delight that John was walking, talking and, most importantly, _breathing_ again. John shook his head fondly and made to move, but caught his foot on a broken tile and fell straight back into Sherlock again, landing against the taller man's firm chest.

He looked up. Tawny met grey-blue for the longest moment with neither blinking.

"Uh… Thanks. I mean, for saving me, and everything…" John said, his pale face gaining a bit more of its normal colour.

Sherlock's lips quirked upwards into a small but warm smile. He raised one hand up to gently take John's chin, using it to tilt the older man's head back slightly. John's eyes widened, but he didn't move a single muscle. Perhaps he'd frozen in shock. Well, Sherlock would soon melt him back to normal again.

"It was my pleasure." Sherlock murmured softly, his voice almost a silky rumble in his chest as gave in to the need he felt and he bent his head down, capturing John's lips with his own, and this time it wasn't for the purpose of making him breathe again.

"_Sorry, boys! I'm sooo changeable! It is a weakness with me, but to be fair to myself, it is my only weakness. You can't be allowed to continue. You just can't. I would try to convince you, but everything I have to say has already crossed your mind!"_

_"Probably my answer has crossed yours."_

It was over almost as soon as it begin, but the one thing that caressed Sherlock's brain was that John had definitely started to kiss back just as Sherlock had pulled away.

John gaped at him, breathing heavily now, his hands clutching onto the lapels of Sherlock's soggy coat. His eyes were even wider than before, if that was even possible.

"Where the hell did that come from?" He blurted out in shock. Sherlock was still holding his chin, and his other arm was draped loosely around John's waist, his palm resting flat against the small of his back. He'd be damned if he was going to let go now.

"Do you remember when you asked if I cared about the people I had to save?" Sherlock inquired, calm and aloof as ever. John nodded, his forehead furrowing in confusion.

"Yes, of course."

"And do you remember my answer?"

"Yes… Yes, I do. Unfortunately."

"I lied." Sherlock said simply, and he was rewarded with the biggest grin he'd ever witnessed before John pulled him back down towards him and pressed their lips together once more, this time with a lot more enthusiasm that was immediately reciprocated.

And that was the moment Sherlock mused that maybe this 'caring' lark wasn't such a bad thing after all.

* * *

**So what d'you think? :)**


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